A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

Pages

Monday, January 18, 2010

Would you like fries with that?

Ain't that America?Georgetown, KY, December 2009

I did a double-take after coming across this on the way into a McDonald's restaurant. Not the kind of message usually associated with the land of Happy Meals and shakes (not milk shakes, mind you. Just shakes.)

I guess my BlackBerry's camera didn't qualify as a concealed or deadly weapon. Maybe it should.

Your turn: What was your first thought when you initially saw this red, white (see here for TP) and black sign? (Mine: What if I'm waving it out in the open? The sign doesn't explicitly ban that, right?)

I always think back to ... I think it was Jeff Foxworthy who did a bit on signs wherein he posited that if there's a sign telling you not to do it, it means that somebody did -- at some point -- do it, reasoning "I don't see no sign...".

In the case of McDonalds, this is sadly true. I forget now where it was, but several years ago some head case shot up a McD's and killed a bunch of people. Do you suppose this sign would have made him reconsider? I'm guessing not.

Oh, and in Georgetown... no, pretty much anywhere Kentucky... yeah, if it was strapped to your hip in plain view, most likely nobody'd care. I can pretty well tell you that in Texas you wouldn't get a second glance. Probably some other places too. America's gun culture is pretty scary.

Along the same lines as Mojo, I wanted to say that in many states in the US it is harder to legally carry a concealed weapon than it is to have a hip holster out in the open.

At a community college where I taught for a while, in the classroom next to mine one of the ladies' husband taught conceal and carry classes so that folks could get certified for it. That was Arkansas.

My first thought - OMG. McD's?! I'm offended by the sign, the need for the sign, the sight of the sign, the image of the gun on the sign. Little kids frequent McDs. Do I want them to see this sign? NO! Do I want to have a discussion with my little ones about why McDs feels this sign is necessary? NO! Do I want to confront the McDs management about this sign? NO! Do I want to just rip the sign down? YES!

I agree with several other commenters about the state of Americans' affair with the gun, BUT, here in my very rural neck of the woods, I've never seen a sign anything like this. Everyone here owns guns, but mostly rifles & shotguns for hunting, not handguns. Long guns are not easily concealed.